Bill Oliver wrote:

It's a problem. The one good thing is that the county dump here
welcomes brush and old tree trunks, if they are sawed down small enough
to fit in the back of a pickup. The county grinds it all and then
gives away the result as free mulch. You can come on Saturday
mornings; they have a frontloader that will fill a pickup with
mulch for you. Thus, if I can cut things down to a reasonable
size, I can at least get rid of it.

Get as much of that mulch as you can. It's great for your garden. The
county gives away free mulch and free leaf mold (fall-early spring), and
I've basically been using these for building my flower beds out of icky,
clay soil. You won't believe the difference between the mulched areas
and the unmulched areas after a couple of years.

That's what I'm hoping. It's also another one of the reasons I'm
working with small spaces -- I hope that when people aren't in one of
the spaces, being in a nearby one will not disrupt wildlife nearby.

I am going through my ForestFarm catalog, crosschecking the plants
against my Sunset Gardening Guide, and making lists of plants that are
wildlife friendly. It's a slow process, but I'm enjoying it, and
learning a lot.

with topsoil and some mulch I had on hand. It has already settled and
is hard as rock again (though the plants are doing fine). The next
area I did later and I added sand to it; it is doing better.

Keep topdressing the beds with compost, and use mulch for weed
suppression. The quality of the soil will improve greatly over time.
I've basically been building the flower beds by laying down layers of
newspaper, putting down leaf mold on top of it, and leaving the whole
thing alone for at least 6 months, generally a year. Between the
freeze-thaw and all the earthworm activity, this stuff gets down fairly
deep, and improves the soil. You can plant right into the top layer,
and it saves an awful lot of work.

Suja